News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life. Parent comment

Re:A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life by chobytes on Friday July 31, 2020 @05:38PM (#24014501)
This is a recipe for a very poor education in my opinion. This sort of mass produced educational content, taught by professional educators rather than researchers, produces students who merely know facts and can perform basic algorithms.

Real understanding of a field comes from long hours engaging with the subject and playing with ideas, and from interacting with others in the field. Working through educational material (where it exist) is obviously helpful, but it's not enough.

tl;dr: Nobody becomes in expert in anything by working through a textbook.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life by NigroqueSim on Saturday August 01, 2020 @12:25AM (#24017599)
Nobody becomes an expert at anything by going to college. Students who get an in Calculus aren't an expert at Calculus or anything close to, they mostly just drilled homework practice problems until they knew enough to an well on an exam.

The goal of undergrad shouldn't be to make anyone an expert, that's what graduate school can be for.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A College Degree Is No Guarantee of a Good Life by barry-cotter on Friday July 31, 2020 @08:40PM (#24016145)
You can very easily become better than 99% of humanity at a topic by diligently working through an advanced textbook. That’s not genuine expertise but it’s not nothing. A community of practice is necessary for true expertise in mature fields but you can get a long, long way with a series of textbooks.
[ Parent | on HN ]